The Vorontsovs-Velyaminovs are an old noble family, especially famous in the XIV century as a reliable support of the Moscow Grand-Ducal dynasty. Later, the family was repeatedly persecuted, but did not die out and still exists, and mainly in Moscow. The authors of published memoirs lived here for many years — three representatives of the same branch of the family: Alexey Pavlovich (1843-1912), Pavel Alekseevich (1865-1948) and Alexey Pavlovich (1897-1976) Vorontsov-Sonya.
Military engineer Alexey Pavlovich Vorontsov-Velyaminov served as an assistant (1882-1889) and then chief (1897-1910) of the Moscow military district, supported the activities of many charitable organizations, in 1909-1910.he actively worked in the Special Committee for the construction of the Museum in Moscow in 1812, supported the creation of the panorama “Borodino”. His son, Pavel Alekseyevich Vorontsov-Velyaminov, served as the head of the 1st Moscow engineering distance (1899-1917), supervised the strengthening of the Foundation of the Moscow Manege, rebuilding the dilapidated floors of the Kremlin Arsenal, and installing sewers for dozens of buildings of the military Department. Participated in the work of the Special Committee for the construction of the 1812 Museum in Moscow and the Commission of the headquarters of the Moscow military district to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Patriotic war of 1812, designed and supervised the construction of the building for the panorama “Borodino”. In 1917-1926, while continuing to serve in the Moscow district military engineering Department, he was engaged in the construction, preservation and restoration of the old barracks Fund, quartering the red guard and the red army, setting up hospitals, and supervised the construction of a multi-span wooden bridge over the river. Istra, restoration of a demountable dam on the Skhodnya river. Alexey Pavlovich Vorontsov-Velyaminov-the grandson and son of those named above-spent his childhood and early youth in Moscow. In 1916, he went to the front and returned to Moscow at the end of 1917. His contribution to the description of the Moscow life of those years — numerous photos and full of bright details of late letters from emigration, used in the comments.
The texts of the memoirs are illustrated with a variety of photographic portraits, species images and genre Amateur photographs from the collection of descendants of A. p. Vorontsov-Velyaminov, provided with detailed comments and for the first time compiled on the basis of documents generic painting.